YY Lite
A six-month journey brings to a lightweight version live streaming app to expand emerging markets in China.
PROBLEM SPACE
After over 10-year development, YY — the earliest and biggest entertainment live streaming platform in China, has met with sluggish user growth in 2017. Meanwhile, we found that the new user retention rate has been declining slightly in the past two years.
GOALS
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Expand the market reach in emerging markets in China
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Create engaging and intuitive live streams viewing experience for new target audiences
ROLE
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UX designer and Product Manager
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Guided the product throughout the execution cycle
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User research, information architecture, wireframing, interaction design
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Led a product-development team consisting of 1 visual designer, 10 engineers, 2 testers
IMPACT
2nd-ranked live streaming app for market penetration in the initial 3 months after launch
DURATION
Launched Jan. 2018
6 months
Background
Redundant features
YY's flagship live streaming app has been in the market since 2008. Its mobile app has copied most of the features of the desktop app. Along with the business expansion, the mobile app has also added an increasing number of new features and became complicated to new users.
Complaints from new users
Not adapted to low-end Android device
"While watching live streaming videos on my Android mobile phone, the videos are often lagging, cutting off, and the app even crashes sometimes."
Complicated interaction
“I use the app for interesting live streaming videos but I find it difficult to understand those interactive games in the live room and have no idea what to do with some features."
Low content discoverability
"I swiped several screens and clicked into a couple of live rooms but found nothing interesting."
Low conversion rate
In the promotional activities in 3rd and 4th tier cities in China, we found that many people refused to download the YY app when noticing its 50MB installation package size, even though we would give them decent rewards.
The conversion rate of our in-feed ads on other News Feeds and social media mobile platforms was low. People would cancel the installation in the middle due to its long time to download.
Outcome
A lightweight live streaming app targeting Android viewers in developing cities
Engaging experience. Simplified live room layouts and interactions for entertainment and gaming live streams respectively.
Easy navigation. Tailored container modules for various contents.
Streamline interaction. Minimized redundant features and animations. Reduced download size to 8M.
User research
Field study for current user portrait
To understand more about YY‘s current users, we selected participants based on different behaviors and conducted a field study with them in their living cities. We interviewed 18 users from 14 cities/districts in 9 provinces.
Primary research question:
What are users' motivations to use YY app?
YY lite should target
User engagement
Audio tool user
Big fan of a streamer
Interested in specific content
Look for entertainment
Through user interviews, we aimed at understanding their background, engagement, motivations, and behaviors.
We also investigated the local economy and recreation conditions trying to study users' living environment, social activities, and entertainment forms.
New target users
We classified our users into 4 types according to their different motivations. (Hover to see descriptions)
Clark Doe
Look for entertainment
Clark Doe
Look for entertainment
They watch live streams to satisfy their need for entertainment. They like to randomly browse various types of content.
Emily Santa
Interested in specific content
Emily Santa
Interested in specific content
They are appealed to YY by a specific type of content. They are loyal to their favorite category, searching for target live streams once they log in the app.
John Doe
Audio tool user
John Doe
Audio tool user
They use YY from the earliest period when YY was still a audio tool for gamers. They are using the app to chat with friends when playing games.
Jane Kylle
Big fan of a streamer
Jane Kylle
Big fan of a streamer
They are big fans of a few specific streamers. They spend a lot rewording the streamers they like. They enjoy other users' admiration and honor.
The business objective of the new product is to grow new live streams viewers and to expand new markets. To achieve this goal, we mapped out our present users on a matrix of user engagement and the potential new target users. From the data analysis, we decided 2 types as our new target users: viewers who look for entertainment, and who are interested in specific content.
Persona
Before jumping into design, we built 2 personas of our target users to help us keep their mental models in mind.
Clark Doe
Randomly look for entertainment
“I move to this city for work and have few friends here. I randomly search for interesting live streams when I feel bored."
Background
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Moved from Yunnan province to Zhongshan city for work as a construction worker with modest income.
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Spending most time working, living, eating in the working place.
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New to the city and has few close friends. Social life is monotonous.
User behaviors
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He eases boredom by watching live streams and talking with other audiences in the live room.
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He has an interest in various topics, such as the talk show, dance, singing, etc.
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He randomly browses interesting live streams by scrolling the feed, exploring different categories pages, or searching terms such as "funny".
Emily Santa
Interested in specific content
"I installed YY when I noticed an Ad about its ASMR content through a TV show. I has sleep problem so I became a loyal audience."
Background
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Has an easy and stable job with regular working hours every day.
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Off work at 4 pm so she has relatively long and continued free hours.
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Has sleep problem for a long time.
User behaviors
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She mainly watches ASMR (Autonomous sensory meridian response) content which eases her sleep problem.
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She browses content under a specific category, or searches related terms of that category, such as "sleep", “ASMR”.
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She likes to interact with ASMR hosts before sleep. She also participated in the hosts' off-line concert.
Market reserach
Distribution of mobile devices in China
We receive some feedbacks and data from the marketing department:
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Users with mobile phones below 3000RMB (400 USD) have occupied a large percentage of the whole mobile market and shown market potential in the near future in China.
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More and more customers have chosen Android over Apple. The Android market is big, but the percentage of Andriod users is small in the YY app.
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Low-price Android users are the main population in the 3rd & 4th tier cities. Although we have made lots of marketing attempts, the percentage of our users in the 3rd and 4th tier cities is small.
Competitive analysis
Toutiao lite
Toutiao lite
Download size: 2.7MB
Daily download: 262,000
Tiktok lite
Tiktok lite
Download size: 5.47MB
Daily download: 172,000
Baidu lite
Baidu lite
Download size: 5.22MB
Daily download: 476,000
Weibo lite
Weibo lite
Download size: 6.89MB
Daily download: 17,000
2.7MB
5.47MB
5.22MB
6.89MB
We conducted a comprehensive competitive analysis to understand the "lightweight version" mobile apps in the market:
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The concept of "lite version" has proven to be successful by many content-driven and social media products such as the Toutiao app, Weibo app, Baidu app.
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According to the 2017 data report of QuestMobile, Toutiao lite app has attracted a great number of Android users and ranks the top 5 favorite application of users with devices below 1000RMB (150USD) and users of 3rd and 4th tier cities.
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To expand the business in low-tier cities, more and more video app developed their lite app for Andriod low-end devices users and quick advertising channels.
SWOT analysis
Target market
Based on the findings that we gained from the market research, we decided to target the 3rd & 4th tier cities and low & mid-priced (below 400dollars) Android smartphone market.
58% of total mobile devices
strengths
Content variety
Professional streamers and popular influencers
Weaknesses
Content discoverability
Beginner-friendly
Performance on low-end devices
opportunities
Fun and engaging experience
Market potentials in the 3rd and 4th-tier cities
threats
Short video applications
People are always looking for new entertainment content.
Research insights
Experience
01
YY's features are complicated to new users and they found it difficult to discover interesting content.
Market
02
Our market occupation of low-tier cities and low-priced Android users is low, while this market has large potential.
Performance
03
YY app is not well adapted to low-end Android devices due to its poor performance and large download size.
Design principles
New user friendly
Simple interactions and straightforward
indicators. Reduce unused features and distracting information.
Content discoverability & engagement
Improve efficiency to access target live streams content. Make the watching experience engaging.
Performance reliability
Reduce the download size. Streamline the whole experience. Adaptive to low-end Android devices.
Information Architecture
To simplify the overall functionalities for a streamline experience in our new lightweight product (YY lite), we decided to reduce all secondary features from the main app (YY app) only keeping the "view live stream" feature for the live stream viewers. I reorganized the architecture and hierarchy for the whole complex system.
Key features
YY main app
YY lite
Reorganize categories
Existing Problems:
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Difficult to find target content
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Messy and unclear categories
Solution:
Reorganize and regroup content categories. Simplified more than 10 unclear categories on the top navigation bar into 4: city (广州), hot (热门), entertainment (娱乐), gaming (游戏).
Search box
Existing Problems:
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Inconspicuous search icon
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Not well adaptive to small screen devices
Solution:
According to YY main app's data, up to 56% of new users actively search for content so we made the search entry more obvious by changing the search icon into the box on the top.
To give more space for showing the live streams feed, when scrolling down, the search box will be hidden; When scrolling up, it appears.
Display the hot search terms to enable the quick search.
Content modules
Existing Problems:
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Difficult to find target content
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Messy layout and unused models
Solution:
Retained 7 types of 21 content modules to show images on the live streams feed. Chose 7 frequently used modules that have been proven by high click rates on the YY main app.
Content managers can easily organize content with these modules.
Also, we optimized the recommendation algorithm on the feed.
Simplify functionalities
Existing Problems:
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Complex and redundant features
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Not well adaptive to low-end devices
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Difficult to find recent viewed
Solution:
Removed bottom menus and subtracted secondary features including News, online games, broadcast, online shopping, etc.
Moved the "sign-in" icon to the top left; After the user successfully logs in, the icon turns to be the entry of the setting sidebar.
Design a new feature "recent viewed" (我的关注). Made it more convenient for audiences to return the live rooms they have been to.
YY lite
YY main app
YY main app
YY lite
Minimalist animation
Existing Problems:
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Not well adaptive to low-end devices
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Video and transition animation lag
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Large download size
Solution:
Simplified animations of transition, refresh, loading, etc for a faster and streamlined experience.
Minimize the download size below 10M.
Redesign live room
Existing Problems:
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Messy and illogical layout
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Distracting information and unused features
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Complicated interaction
Solution:
Tailored 2 layouts respectively for verticle (mobile) and horizontal (gaming & PC) live streams.
Removed unnecessary information and unused features, such as Raffie and Quiz, facilitating an engaging and immersive experience.
Reorganized functional sections. Moved setting buttons to the top and the interactive features (comments & gifts) to the bottom.
Measuring & celebrating success
2nd-ranked live streaming app for market penetration in the initial 3 months, by Cheetah data 2018Q2.
Android devices new users retention rate improved by 18%, compared to the YY main app.
Many live streamers introduced YY lite app to viewers spontaneously
Users posted positive comments in forums.
Reflection
Find the balance between business goals and user experience
The primary goal of this project is to help the business grow while I realize that user experience and business goals usually go hand by hand. I learned to evaluate a design solution by multiple metrics, including market position, user feedback, and quantitative data.
Think systematically within a complex system
The YY platform is a complex system due to its long-time development. Before I stripped-down features from the main app, I spent a great number of efforts understanding the overall system, from functionalities to interface interactions because a small change might bring to a huge mistake. I reprioritized and built up a new hierarchy to fit into the new goal. Throughout the process, I collaborated with colleagues cross-functionally and coordinated resources from different departments.
Make long-term strategy
The YY main app has become unfriendly to new users because they keep adding inconsistent new features for pursuing short-term business benefits. From this perspective, YY lite is only a remedy. If we don't establish a design system at the early stage and stick with its initial principles, it will become another complicated product.